Review of "The Making of the American Conservative Mind (National Review and Its Times)" by Jeffrey Hart

Hart, a National Review editor and contributor, chronicles 50 years of the notable conservative magazine, profiling editors and major writers and recounting the NR's opinion of 10 Presidents, from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. He reminds us of a time we have forgotten, if we ever knew it, when liberal thought dominated both Republican and Democrat parties, global communism was active in the United States, and the idea of conservatives having an influence on public policy was something that founder William F. Buckley and his team didn't expect to see in their lifetimes.

The goal was realized in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, Hart gives him 49 of the book's 368 pages and considers him one of the great Presidents of the 20th century, naming FDR and Eisenhower as the other two. The National Review found great fault with Eisenhower, but Hart shows him to be cunning and effective behind the mask of the amiable homespun rube, pointing out that what he didn't do (intervene in Hungary and Suez) was as important as what he did.

The profiles of some of the NR's personalities can be fascinating, consider that of Russell Kirk which especially appealed to me: quoting Kirk,"So far as I know I am the only American who holds the St. Andrews doctor of letters and I am quite sure that I am the only person who has been capped with the cap of John Knox (literally) and hooded with the hood of St. Ignatius of Loyola". Kirk was something of an anachronist, wore a cape and refused to use some technology, and philosophically had sympathy for the Southern Agrarians.

Hart is a conservative and criticizes the Supreme Court moving into areas that should be left to the legislature. He also sees the need for two strong political parties and was glad to see the Democrats recover from their lunge away from the mainstream with George McGovern in 1972. He is bordering on critical of the National Review in recent times, pointing out that they weren't being intellectually honest when criticizing Clinton's tax increase and then arguing that the good economy under Clinton was due to George Bush Sr., whose tax increase they opposed as bad for the economy. "The magazine appeared to be dogmatically against raising taxes whatever the circumstances and whatever the deficit. That is, National Review, on the grounds that lower taxes meant less government, always supported tax cuts. But in the real world, Americans wanted such programs as Medicare and Social Security, and these had to be paid for...was NR losing its independent critical edge?"

His analysis, via Norman Podhoretz, of Clinton's success is hilarious: "If he had not been so great a liar, he would not have been able to get away not only with his own private sins but with the political insults he was administering to some of his core constituencies...And so, through a kind of political and psychological jujitsu, it came to pass that Clinton's worst qualities were what enabled him to accomplish something good."

I highly recommend "The Making of the American Conservative Mind". It has helped me understand the different philosophical groups that make up the Republican Party. It is no betrayal of principal for a faction within the party to attack President Obama as a liberal for following the policies of Dwight Eisenhower; this group saw Eisenhower as a liberal, and he governed as one at a time when the Republican party was controlled by East Coast liberal elites. Buckley didn't vote in the 1956 election because he could not support Eisenhower. But the National Review and Buckley prized intellectualism, clear thinking, and reliance on facts rather than ideology. They also came to see the limits of their conservatism with a society that functions by consensus. Reagan was about as far as it went. And this was not the Reagan who lost the 1976 New Hampshire primary to Ford because he promised to trim 90 billion 1976 dollars (!) from the federal budget and planned to pay for it by cutting off the federal subsidy, allowing states to pay for whatever programs they wanted with their own revenue (meaning New Hampshire would have had an income tax or no schools). This was the Reagan who had learned from that experience that while Americans like the idea of self reliance, they also take certain things in the social environment for granted.

The People Of Wisconsin Have Spoken

And they came out solidly against public sector unions. That this could happen in Wisconsin, one of the early supporters of workers rights, is a sign both of the irrelevance of unions in today's workforce and how incapable we are of dealing with the slightest bit of subtlety in our political discourse.

When we talk about public sector union employees, we're mainly talking about teachers. Just think for a minute about what happens when teaching jobs don't pay as much, have little job security, and lose retirement and health care benefits. Will bright, dedicated high school graduates still want to get a 4 year degree plus a 5th year and probably a masters degree in order to get a teaching job? What will we do for teachers? Will we drop the requirement of a College degree? Of course thinking of a teacher with no degree is ridiculous, but if you don't have a pool of educated applicants what else could you do?

This is the sort of discussion we should have before we vote to break the public unions. Yes, there are problems with unions, they need to get their head out of the sand and make some concessions for the good of the system; but take them away and there is no check on the sort of cutbacks I describe above. Do you really think those things won't happen?

It comes down to this: what kind of a society do we want to live in? Do we want children to grow up with a good education and be able to give something back? We could ask a similar question about many other issues; one of the benefits of paying taxes is being able to live in a beautiful, innovative, vibrant, well-functioning community.

The Place for Dissent in a Democratic Society

The privilege to dissent from the majority is probably the most important Constitutional right in our Democracy. In America you may hurl insults at the President of the United States, publicly campaign against laws passed by Congress, or support any idea, however disagreeable it may be to some, and your right to do this is protected.

We allow and encourage dissent because we know it makes us stronger, it protects us from group-think, and allows the possibility that the majority just may be wrong.

So when I say that to resent and oppose a law arrived at by the democratic process is undemocratic, I have to also say that you have every right to do this. What am I saying then? I guess I'm arguing for having some priorities and picking your spots. If you dissent in every case where the group decision is different than your own, I question this. There is value to the continued functioning of the group and many times this outweighs the value of taking a stand against something you disagree with.

During the Internet boom of the late 1990's I did contract computer programming for ConWay Transportation. On occasion we had meetings with the regional Service Center managers to figure out application functionality. When there was a difference of opinion within the group, the managers had a way of dealing with it: the question was asked "are you willing to die on this hill?" Most of the time the person wasn't willing; when they were we spent a lot of time and resolved the issue. The idea here is that if the group is going to get anything done, they can't have a long drawn out debate whenever there is a disagreement. Some internal screening has to decide which things are important enough to spend a lot of time on. The person was being asked if they thought their issue was important enough, they got to decide, not the group. However, keep in mind that everyone knew how much time we had for the meeting and how much we had to cover. Also, if you were willing to die on every hill people would stop listening to you.

The definition of a group is a collection of different individuals. A group, by nature, is a compromise; you gain the benefit of numbers and shared resources and you give up some individual freedom. The only way to have a group that always does what you think is right is to leave the group.

With no GOP, what happens now?

Am I assuming too much here? I don't think so. I had planned on writing a post about the amazing power and rare use of direct democracy seen in the protests against the Stop Internet Piracy Act, made possible by the Internet and the wide availability of Person Digital Devices (cell phones, computers, etc.). But this is more immediate, and is another example of democracy. How so? GOP leaders and strategists were over-ruled by the voters in the South Carolina primary; the same voters that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have been feeding propaganda for years. Now these voters really believe

1. Barack Obama is a socialist who is raising taxes, expanding government, destroying capitalism, and leading our country down a path to ruin. Given this as a starting point, it is obvious that he must be stopped.

They also believe

2. he is so weak and ineffective (although at the same time he is a dangerous socialist threat) that someone as flawed and unelectable as Newt Gingrich can out-debate him and beat him in a general election.

GOP "elites" know this isn't true, and would give anything to stop Gingrich, but they also were happy to use the propaganda duing the 2010 midterm elections, and now they are seeing the downside of creating your own reality.

It is this force of deliberately misinformed democracy, maybe involving as much as 30% of Republican voters, that makes it impossible for the Republican Party to turn back the clock and return to its role as the reasonable voice for government restraint.

The question is, with the Democratic Party now winning all the Presidential elections for the foreseeable future, and most likely the decrease of GOP congressional power, where will that restraining voice come from? Unchecked progressivism is as much of a problem as unchecked conservatism.

Now it is true that the Democratic party has absorbed much Republican wisdom over the years. In fact what Bill Clinton began with Welfare Reform was continued by Barack Obama in his very Republican Affordable Care Act (it would have been even more Republican if he could have gotten some GOP cooperation). President Obama also offered a budget reduction deal with big cuts to entitlements, a deal that David Brooks angrily denounced Republicans for turning down. Many old style Republicans may find a place in the Democratic party for this reason.

But there is a difference, and the Democratic Party weakness of being driven by special interests and finding a government program to solve every problem needs a counterbalance. Who will provide it? Even if pundits like David Brooks and David Frum find a new party to get behind, or a revived version of the Republican party, this won't be a big enough group to counteract the Democrats. The group that supports Gingrich may end up in the Tea Party but they aren't big enough either, and the true Ron Paul grass roots Tea Party supports things that the first group doesn't agree with, like bringing home troops and non-intervention abroad.

So what will happen to our country as we sort this out in the next several decades? Maybe the young generation just coming up will change things; many of these are Ron Paul supporters. There is clearly an opening for an anti-war, more civil liberties party, but these are also natural positions of the Democratic party, and they will return to them if they are given political cover. It's hard to imagine the U.S. as a one party state, but I can't see anything else, at least with the issues I know of today.

What they talk about in those "Quiet Rooms"

It looks like we're going to have our debate about the role of government, even if Romney is the GOP candidate rather than Paul. And that debate has already started in the Republcan Primaries, thanks to the populist attack adds by Gingrich and Perry, which point out that Romney made his money at Bain Capital by taking over companies, laying off workers, and selling at a profit. These are normal activities in a free market (notice that Ron Paul defends Romney), as are more popular things like business startups. You can certainly make a case that good can come from the sort of thing Romney did, and you can even support the idea that this function is a necessary part of the market. But what about those workers who lost their jobs? That's the problem, and the fact that Gingrich and Perry think they can get an advantage by pointing this out means that even Republican voters agree.

Solutions could be proposed for this problem: Maybe you could regulate hostile takeovers, or maybe increase the safety net benefits perhaps focusing on retraining for the unemployed workers while providing them with living expenses. These are the sort of things they talk about in Romney's "Quiet Rooms". But why do they talk about it at all? Isn't this something you would expect to be the province of Democrats, not Republicans? Republicans know as well as anybody that you can't govern without the consent of the governed, and you can't allow outcomes like large numbers of displaced workers. The market solution for this may be that those workers are unemployed or under-employed for the rest of their working lives, and this is not socially or politically acceptable.

Of course, approaches like the ones above are anti-free market and create unintended consequences that we may not like. But we don't like seeing a bunch of people lose their jobs either, even if we're just looking at the opinions of Republican voters. That's why we need to have this debate.

The plans that come out of the quiet rooms are likely to be more acceptable to the business/corporate lobby than those that come from a popular political campaign.

Where Does Change Come From?

Right now it comes from the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Some of us thought it came from electing Barack Obama in 2008, some of you were afraid that was true. Sorry to disappoint you both. Presidents can have an effect (look at the Health Care Bill (which I am glad for)l and the Iraq War and our state of seemingly permanent war (which I am not glad for) ). But big, societal change comes from the people. The Tea Party has shown us the power of a movement to redefine the political agenda; OWS can do the same.

If you want change, get behind one of the groups out there, are start another one if you don't find your issues represented by the Tea Party or by Occupation Wall Street.

I will attempt to summarize your choices, readers with better knowledge please correct me if I'm wrong.

The Tea Party stands for absolute individual freedom, and little or no reliance on government. What this means is little or no taxes, little or no regulation, and little or no social safety net and government services. Our current social safety net includes things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment payments, foodstamps. Our current government sevices include things like the military, K-12 education, public Universities (tuition is state subsidized, although it is certainly not free), public libraries. Support the Tea Party if you want to be free, pay lower taxes, and see a lot of the list above go away.

Occupation Wall Street (and the other Occupy movements) seem to stand for greater opportunity for those with lower incomes. This implies an increase in the social safety net and in government services. It also implies higher taxes. I see OWS as a move toward a more European-style state (look up the German Education System and the German Tax System in Wikipedia for an example). Support the Occupy movements if you want things like free College tuition, help for homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments because they lost their job, help for the unemployed, and higher taxes.

Let me put in a plug for OWS here, since that's where my sympathies lie (unless the Tea Party takes a lesson from the Amish, that is):

Maybe you like some of the OWS issues, support for the homeowners and unemployed, but not free tuition, say. Maybe you are put off by the students demanding cancellation of their student loan debt. If some of the other OWS issues do fit with your priorities, then get involved with OWS, make your point, maybe they could learn something from you.

Right now it's either OWS or the Tea Party, or start your own.

The American Party

Recent discussion with advocates of the Tea Party and also watching the first episode of Ken Burns' "Prohibition" has clarified my thinking. There is nothing evil or unusual about the Tea Party. It is a single-issue special interest group focused on cutting government spending. Tea Party followers may say that there's more to it than this, but for the purposes of analysis I think it is enough to just look at the "cut spending" issue; this explains most of the actions of the Tea Party so far. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, it is in the great tradition of U.S. politics. The Democratic party has a number of special interests that compete for attention and the Republicans have others as well.

But aren't we seeing unusual things on the political stage right now? Government grinding to a halt, heated, high-stakes negotiations over things that used to be routine, one party voting in lockstep even more than normal? Yes, there's definitely something different going on.

Here's what has happened: the Republican Party is now controlled by the Tea Party special interest. And because the single-issue concern of the Tea Party happens to be government spending, this has impact on almost all legislation.

Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose in 2013 we see the emergence of a group known as "The American Party". It started out with the Wall Street protests of 2011, got stronger after the 2012 Presidential Election, and now it opposes anything that President Christie wants to do. (Okay, I don't think Romney can beat Obama, but Christie might). With one exception, it did support his 500 billion stimulus bill (What?! say the Tea Partiers; but I told you, he's from New Jersey, not Texas). Then in the 2014 midterms the Democrats win back the House (but not the Senate, which they lost in 2012) thanks to the populist energy of the American Party. Forty new Democrat Representatives are from the American Party and the rest of the democrats are afraid to vote against them. So what is the American Party interested in? Workers rights. They want to pass "Card Check" (the bill making it easier to organize a union), but they also want a Constitutional amendment ending "Right to Work" laws. So far, so good, progressives? Although only controlling the House of Representatives, they apply great leverage by obstructing all legislative operations of government, including raising the debt ceiling. What's more, they punish any democrats that won't go along by guaranteeing a high-profile challenge in the primary.

At this point as a progressive I am thinking, "I like the American Party, I agree with most of their aims. However, right now they control the Democratic party. This is not good for the long term. Somehow we need to change our primary process to discourage their targeting. Also, it is bad for the country if we obstruct everything, we can't go along with this. And blackmail over issues that threaten the well being of the U.S. is totally out of bounds no matter what. So much as I like what they're doing, I will either get the American party to change their tactics, or I will speak out against them every chance I get."